Earlier this month, the Minneapolis City Council approved a $1 million contract over two years with New York University School of Law’s Policing Project to implement a multi-year plan for building out the city’s public safety apparatus to eventually go beyond policing.
The Safe and Thriving Communities report was announced by city leaders over the summer, but while the roadmap has been clear since July, implementation of the plan seemed up in the air. That has changed following the appointment of new Office of Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette, and the approval of the seven-figure contract.
City leaders hope to use the new funds to kick-start the implementation of the plan, which promotes the use of preventative and restorative services in addition to emergency response, while potentially remedying officer staffing woes.
NYU Policing Project
The main goal of NYU’s Policing Project is to promote public safety reform and solutions that lean away from the reliance on law enforcement, said Alex Heaton, NYU’s director of Transforming First Response. They do this by proposing legislation, doing on-the-ground research and directly assisting local governments – the latter two of which they will use in their work with Minneapolis after signing a $1 million contract with the city that will last two years.
“We are working with cities across the country, including Minneapolis, to build a foundation of research as to how we’re creating public safety on the ground,” Heaton said. “Then to build up those systems so that they can better support the public and reduce the reliance on law enforcement.”
The Safe and Thriving Communities report outlined three areas – preventative, responsive and restorative services – in which the city could build on existing programs that officials have deemed successes, like the behavioral crisis response teams.
Heaton said the Policing Project’s immediate role is to use the Safe and Thriving report to assess what programs the city is using already, what’s working, what isn’t working and what’s missing, then report their findings to city officials.
Barnette said the report differs from the work the city contracted the NYU researchers to do because the report gives the city the roadmap while the Policing Project will tell them where to go next.
“What (NYU researchers) are saying is, ‘Here are all the services, here’s where they fit in these categories. Now, are they working?’” Barnette said. “They have the experience in this area to push us forward.”
Potential staffing solution
Staffing has been a challenge not just for the Minneapolis Police Department, but for law enforcement agencies across the country. Following the murder of George Floyd, MPD has seen a steady wave of resignations, retirements and disability leaves, while struggling to recruit new officers to fill those vacancies.
Heaton said the plan to reduce reliance on police can help lift that strain on the short-staffed department, though it is not a cure-all.
“It’s not a one-for-one type of situation, but it is something where we hope that improving the public safety ecosystem is something that will reduce the burden on the staff that they are trying to address throughout recruiting,” he said.
Barnette said instituting more alternative response services like behavioral crisis response teams, as well as more preventative and restorative programs, can prevent departments from being stretched thin by responding to every call. They won’t solve staffing issues on their own, but they can reduce interactions with police while better serving people’s needs, he said.
“If we think of crime prevention – violence interrupters and other organizations similar to them – as at the front of the road, they are trying to make sure people don’t have a negative interaction with the police,” he said. “I definitely believe that it helps us, but I don’t know that there’s a magic bullet or one thing that will remedy the low staffing numbers in the police department.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story had a headline that incorrectly indicated funding came from NYU to the city, but the spend is from the city of Minneapolis to NYU.
